Reagan's enduring wisdom on immigration

In 1985, President Reagan asked his domestic policy council: Should I keep pushing legislation offering amnesty to undocumented migrants?

Many Reagan aides wanted to drop his bid for amnesty, or legal status for people in the country illegally. Pollsters told Reagan the public opposed amnesty. The president’s own amnesty legislation had been defeated in Congress in 1982 and 1984. But Reagan refused to surrender.

Recently, at his presidential library in Simi Valley, I read records of the bill that became the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. IRCA has long been dismissed across the political spectrum as “the failed amnesty law.”

But the records tell another story. The 1986 law was well-conceived and humane — reflecting the practical wisdom of a California president.

Reagan and amnesty’s co-sponsor, U.S. Sen. Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming, pushed the bill for two reasons. First, they saw legalization as essential to protecting immigrants. (Reagan often shared stories from California about exploitation of undocumented immigrants.) Second, they worried that undocumented immigrants would be used as scapegoats to divide the country if they weren’t integrated into society.

“If we do not choose to have immigration reform in the near future, the alternative will not just be the status quo,” said Simpson in 1986. “No, the alternative instead will be an increased public intolerance — a failure of compassion, if you will — toward all forms of immigration and types of entrants.”

The bill passed and forestalled Simpson’s nightmare — but only for a while. Today’s immigration conflicts exist not because amnesty failed, as immigration restrictionists claim, but because of our collective failure to understand what made the 1986 law successful.

IRCA had two big pieces. Under one, amnesty, 2.7 million people received permanent residency and could build lives in America. This was the law’s fundamental success. Amnesty, funded by applicants’ fees, also turned a $100 million profit for the government. And while immigration restrictionists still claim amnesty encouraged more undocumented immigrants to come, studies show the opposite: Amnesty produced a decline in illegal entries.

Unfortunately, 2 million people didn’t legalize their status, because the law was not generous enough. It covered only immigrants who had arrived before 1982. Some undocumented immigrants feared making themselves known, and others were discouraged by the bureaucratic legalization process. In retrospect, amnesty should have covered all undocumented immigrants and established a regular legalization process every few years.

Instead, the legislation’s other big piece was more influential in turning immigration into an American quagmire: a new enforcement regime against employing the undocumented.

That regime didn’t stop undocumented immigration. Neither have the ensuing 30 years of new restrictions on undocumented immigration. Instead, such laws, and our failure to have another amnesty, have made it nearly impossible for undocumented people to legalize their status, thus adding to the numbers of people who stay in America but live in the shadows. Even migrants who arrive legally and apply to stay are turned into lawbreakers by our system.

This is Kafkaesque: To stop illegal immigration, we have made all immigrants illegal.

Unfortunately, both advocates and opponents of immigration still follow this same failed script: prioritizing increased spending on enforcement. If they offer a path to legal status, it is decades long and thus worthless.

Let’s flip that script. Make amnesty, not enforcement, the starting point on immigration. Not one more penny for enforcement until there’s amnesty for all our undocumented neighbors.

Amnesty is wise for reasons bigger than immigration. This has become a brutally unforgiving country. Americans needs amnesty not to forgive immigrants. We need amnesty so that we might forgive ourselves.